Introduction

Bus services are an economic and social cornerstone for Scotland with the sector accounting for 87% of all public transport journeys in 2021-22, and are particularly relied on by disabled people, women, and those on low incomes. Bus services provide a vital social service, functioning as an essential link between communities.

While continuing to emerge from the issues caused by the global pandemic and Brexit, the role of bus services is set to become even more important as we face the urgent realities of the climate emergency. Bus will be key to delivering Scotland’s National Transport Strategy (NTS) vision for the country’s transport system for the next 20 years. At the same time, however, bus patronage in Scotland (and the UK) has been declining since the 1960s with the trend continuing through and beyond the privatisation of the sector following deregulation in 1985.

Set against this backdrop, the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 (“the 2019 Act”) represented an important milestone for Scotland’s bus regulatory landscape with a suite of new options designed to give local transport authorities (LTAs) the tools and flexibility they need to improve the operation of local bus services in their areas. The 2019 Act provides LTAs with a viable and flexible set of options to help ensure that bus services in their area meet local users’ needs, ensuring that there are sustainable bus networks across Scotland.

The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of the duties that an LTA has to support bus services in the context of the powers within the 2019 Act, and the opportunities they offer along with other powers an LTA has at their disposal. This guidance gives an overview of:

  • The power to subsidise services
  • Bus Services Improvement Partnerships, which replaces the Quality Partnership (QP) powers
  • Local services franchising, which replaces the Quality Contract (QC) powers
  • The smart and integrated ticketing powers built on the 2001 Act powers, including powers on Open Data, and
  • The new powers for local transport authorities to run their own services.

Separate, more detailed, guidance has been produced to support LTAs who decide to proceed with running their own services, with further guidance to support LTAs in using the BSIP process or implementing a franchising framework to be published in 2024.

All these guidance documents have, or will be, produced following consultation with the bus industry, passenger representatives, local transport authorities and other key stakeholders.

We will monitor the use of the guidance and how individual authorities develop and implement the bus powers to ensure that it remains fit for purpose.